In Stay Sharp Episode 123, Digital Product Series: iBase-t, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant present another entry in their series exploring digital engineering platforms. This time, they’re getting to know iBase-t through its CEO, Naveen Poonian. Together, the trio dig into the basics, focus, and culture of the company that bills itself as the aerospace and defense (A&D) experts.
Focusing on Execution
Naveen explains that what’s been missing in the manufacturing world is expanding the idea of digital engineering to include digital manufacturing. “How do you digitize that? How do you pull in data from digital engineering and really be able to leverage it and use it on the shop floor?” he asks. “How do you do all this work from design to build and even to maintaining a product in a digital environment?” In a complex manufacturing process, he says, manufacturers typically bring a lot of different work cells together. Each of them might have their own manufacturing execution system (MES), but a manufacturing operations management (MOM) system will manage all of the subprocesses.
Since iBase-t manages the execution layer of your processes, whether large or small, it’s both MES and MOM, as well as maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) and supplier quality management (SQM). He says, “[Manufacturers] have big engineering departments, lots of tools, lots of ways to design products. You have ERPs, these are business systems, really managing the resourcing and logistics, to get the parts and pieces to the products. But then we’re how it gets done.” Jonathan adds, “Digital engineering can be a lot about definition and planning, but you guys are carrying that vision through the rest of the lifecycle.”
Naveen suggests that the value of greater efficiency in a manufacturer’s execution layer is trillions of dollars in backlog—and if there’s that much backlog, there must be areas of opportunity. That’s where manufacturers can get the most return. “It’s your raw goods, it’s your people, and it’s the process to get the product out. If you can be more efficient there, and 80% of your costs are really driven on this area, then why wouldn’t you focus?” he asks.
iBase-t Customers
Though iBase-t is rooted in A&D, they define themselves more broadly as best suited for complex discreet manufacturing, which involves highly engineered, distinct products. That means lengthy bills of materials, thousands of people in manufacturing, thousands of suppliers, and while that’s typical of A&D, there are plenty of manufacturers in other industries that could also reap rewards from increasing design and manufacturing efficiency. “A&D manufacturing and complex discrete manufacturing, things are going to change all the time because you’re trying to take a hundred million, 200 million, $500 million products and you’re trying to cut that in half,” Naveen says. “That means you’re changing the process, you’re changing the design. Our solution’s really meant to handle that type of complexity.”
iBase-t prides itself on offering a product as well as a team that helps companies redesign and realize their manufacturing vision. Though they primarily work directly with customers, they also scale their offering through partners like Razorleaf because digital transformation is difficult and the company believes customers should have technical and functional experts available to support them throughout the process. “You’re about being close to the customer, making sure that you can deliver the value that they need because it’s such a high value, high risk kind of market that you’re serving,” Jonathan says.
Moving into the Future
What’s ahead for iBase-t is continuing their approach of being hands-on with customers and really listening to their needs. Hot topics like AI, FIPS compliance, and cloud modernization are on the list, but so is interoperability, specifically how to integrate work with other solutions and consider what the next-generation solutions will be. Naveen explains, “The more we’re embedded with our customers, the more we know about the next product that we want to build—or is something going wrong so we can really fix and fine tune.”
From the earliest days of the company—when Naveen’s father was on the shop floor of McDonnell Douglas’s C-17 program in 1986—iBase-t has been centered around identifying customer problems and delivering solutions that help them be more efficient through digital processes. “That’s why we have near a hundred percent success rate, because we know it, we get it, we’ve done it,” Naveen says. “We have a team that really helps make it move forward.”
Learn More About iBase-t
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including how iBase-t is working closely with GE Aerospace to improve execution, how AI can make customer use of iBase-t’s Solumina platform more effective, the rags-to-riches and nurse-to-CEO stories of the company, and more.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 123: Digital Product Series: iBase-t and join us each week for a new podcast.
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